I'll keep updating this as new games appear on these boards, and remove any games that become dead links.

It's not complete, and I'd appreciate it if anyone whose game(s) is missing would send me the info, (and anyone whose info is incomplete!) and then I can copy/paste it into the page. Otherwise, they are just going to get added slowly as I get the free time to follow the links and find out the info myself (hint: I'll probably miss a few by accident).

Screenshots are 320 pixels wide; I would *greatly* appreciate it if you could make a 320 pixel screenshot for me (at the moment I'm just scaling whatever screenshots each game has on it's own site - if your game is missing a screenshot, or you don't like it, make me a new screenshot!).

Great idea! I began to go through the weblinks of people that have an URL in their profiledescription and found these games. I've only reached page 13 of 82 yet so there's more games to come if I don't loose intrest

there should be a link or some sort of section on the home page of the community.java.net/games web site that provides space for this. You might say that there is java.com and its games section but I like the idea of putting the list of known games/demos (I mean not just complete games) that provides big screen shots and info on the game. That's a quick and cool page!

And it really needs to be sorted by some kind of rating... unless we are going to be really selective about what get's listed. (There is a lot of stuff that is out there that isn't really worth playing... you don't want that to be people's first impression.)

We are also working to get a "Beta Games" page for works-in-progress that are substantially along, but not yet commercially released.

It should be noted that currently all the games on java.com point to external sites. This is tied to Sun's policy of not "hosting" other people's content.

It should also be noted that very few of the games are webstart-enabled. It might be good to create a java.net project for finished (or at least playable) webstart-enabled games submitted by the community. We can create a list of games with categories and icons on the project page and then submit the list to the Java.com folks for inclusion with the others. As with other games on java.com, links from the java.com site would point to the java.net project page. I know it seems like there's an extra, unecessary, hop in there, but that's the way java.com is currently set up.

Yup, although I confess I very go there only very infrequently (see below)

Quote

We are also working to get a "Beta Games" page for works-in-progress that are substantially along, but not yet commercially released. ...It should also be noted that very few of the games are webstart-enabled. It might be good to create a java.net project for finished (or at least playable) webstart-enabled games submitted by the community.

OK. Would there be any value in me maintaining this external list as well?

The main reason I can think of is if e.g. I maintain a longer list that is rapidly updated etc, whilst java.net could contain a short list of the top projects or something.

The main concern I have is that if it's not pretty streamlined both to add/update projects AND to find them then it will either get out of date or be updated too slowly for many people to continue to visit (e.g. I don't bother looking at the java.com site because it's so sparse and so slow (relatively speaking) to update).

Also there is a significant amount of work to do w.r.t quality control as well, which could theoretically further slow down the java.net process. At the moment I can easily review each game as it comes in (check it works, encourage them to all go webstart, etc) without delaying the update process at all, whereas I imagine anything on java.net would take longer to get reviewed / accepted?

Maybe it would even help you to break free of java.net (this has been mentioned before by Chris, that for corporate reasons you have to be a part of java.net and play by the rules, but that you'd prefer more freedom), by existing an example of what cannot be achieved so well by java.net, which was really designed to solve different problems / provide different features?

If it is worth me continuing with this list, then I suggest pruning this thread to just include the link + instructions on how to submit a game for inclusion, and making it sticky.

At the very least I think swpalmer is right, and that JGO needs to link to it, preferably from the JGO front page. Then it's easy for people to submit stuff AND easy to find it.

I'm completely happy to change the style and/or add any disclaimers if it helps or is necessary. The most important thing to me is to have the page in existence and to guarantee it stays fresh - and that everyone in this community can submit their games.

Making a page that immediately makes people think "hey, there's some cool looking games!" (this has been influential in the sorting process so far . Sorry to be so image-ist!)

Inclusive, everyone should be able to be involved. This is going to become particularly hard as soon as I get submissions of 50 identical tetris clones

Showcasing promising games. I really want to give extra exposure to struggling java games developers. This will get hard if e.g. a large corporation muscles in with a load of slick innovative games that threaten to obscure great efforts from small groups and individual bedroom-developers.

Provide incentives for people to improve their games, and to finish them (too many games never get completed!)

Make it very easy and quick for *players* to find and play games. This is the primary reason for encouraging developers (ultimately possibly even forcing them) to make their games webstartable.

On the very far horizon is the prospect of possibly generating some revenue from these games that would then be divided up amongst the games developers, with each developer gettting a percentage proportional to how much their game was played/downloaded.

For people trying to make commercial java games, life is very tough. Anything that would make this easier would be a good thing IMHO. I've been inspired by some brilliantly clever systems elsewhere in teh games industry that have actually *worked* (NB: if anyone from the GTG wants to talk about how this could be done, and not only provide cash to java games developers but even provide cash to the GTG, then get in contact with me and I'll show you some inspirational examples).

But for now it's all about giving "fair" exposure to everyone, at very low effort. I think the brilliant games we see on this category in the forums deserve better promotion, and as a player I get fed up navigating the forum just to play some games .

So. At the moment, my ordering scheme is this:

Commercial, completed games get priority. They need all the help they can get, and they look really nice too.

All other completed games, ordered by how excting / fun / innovative / etc they are. I'm not trying to promote tetris-clones. I am trying to promote people with funky game ideas who have the guts and skill or plain determination to carry them off.

All works-in-progress, sorted by most promising/interesting/fun etc first. Same as above, but the incentive is to complete your game and get it higher on the page.

If you can come up with better ideas on how to arrange the page, especially including rankings of some sort (e.g. each game gets a higher score for the number of times people click on it), which continues to balance the things I mentioend at the top, then let's hear them!

Here's an idea: howabout a "top-5" that are hand picked and reselected every week or every month, with everything else ranked down the page according to number of hits (or something like that)? This would allow me to always have some eye candy at the top of the page wihtout unfairly prejudicing, and also give extra exposure to projects that need / deserve it, whilst having a page structure that is mainly composed of rankings that cause boring games to slide down the page...

And it really needs to be sorted by some kind of rating... unless we are going to be really selective about what get's listed. (There is a lot of stuff that is out there that isn't really worth playing... you don't want that to be people's first impression.)

I'm not going to be "really selective" about what gets included unless I start getting shedloads of rubbish . I'm prepared to be selective, but I'd like to maintain that "inclusivity" part I mentioned as much as possible. PS I don't count "in progress" games as rubbish if the are going to be a good game, I only count games that will always be rubbish as rubbish. Just FYI .

I guess there needs to be a clear delineation between games that are "ready to play" and games that are "far from complete but look promising". The former are actually expected to be fun, whilst the latter might just be looking for feedback, comments etc. E.g. early versions of Wurm could be said to be stultifyingly dull, and yet they're fun to look at - definitely worth seeing, but not something you want someone to present to you as a game, which would have raised your expectations that it will have lots of gameplay.

e.g. Why is Alien Flux listed under "Adventure Games" and not "Action"

Also for many of the games listed there they are of questionable quality. They aren't the sort of thing that I would pay for. In a sense it gives a bad image to Java gaming. That it is only good for simple applets and not professional games.

All other completed games, ordered by how excting / fun / innovative / etc they are. I'm not trying to promote tetris-clones. I am trying to promote people with funky game ideas who have the guts and skill or plain determination to carry them off.

All works-in-progress, sorted by most promising/interesting/fun etc first. Same as above, but the incentive is to complete your game and get it higher on the page.

Well, here's my 4K entry from last year. It's a complete game of Missile Command, and would fit nicely in the "retro-games" area. Oh, and did I mention that it's only 4K? ;-)

Competitions (just a list of links to different java / game programming competitions)

EDIT: obviously, webstart-ability will be waived for small compo games, although its still greatly encouraged for any large (eg 64k) compo games (and the small ones if you want to show off and can fit it in )...you can make a webstart version even if it goes over your 64k, and have the original 64k version on your site which people can download if they want to check you really did it

We have started to caputure all of the URLs that have been posted within the forums and validating the projects, making sure the links still work, etc. As Athomas said, we are working on a beta page for Java.Com and will link to this from the front of Java.Net/games

Having not been directly involved in the "Beta" page, I'm not sure how closely it reflects some of the suggestions that have been made here, or how far along we are in the design. That said, I like the direction this discussion has been going in, and would like to encourage further exploration.

It may be worth creating a project or site as Blah suggests, aggregating the links there and then referencing them from the beta page. That way, Blah or whoever wants to run the project can handle managing new entries and deleting dead links etc, after the "beta" page goes live. It would still be up to Chris & the Java.Com folks to decide what makes it to that java.com site, but at least it wouldn't require Chris to return to the "Your Games Here" thread in six months and spend another week or so sifting through it for decent, functional games.

IIRC 508 isn't even an official code, so it's presumably geocities mucking about.

Until it works, it's not going up .

Also there's a couple I'm not putting up because they're applets but they don't work - they use code to invoked windows-only CAB's, ActiveX, or similar to try and auto force/check you to download a JRE. Stupid. If they convert their pages to use the real applet tags, I'll add them too

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